Jiangsu – China Digital Times (CDT)http://chinadigitaltimes.net
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Workers Must Pledge Not to Protest Nuclear Waste Planthttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2016/08/workers-pressed-pledge-nuclear-waste-plant-protest/
Tue, 16 Aug 2016 22:08:07 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=196007Protests in the southern coastal city of Lianyungang earlier this month have lead to the suspension of a planned nuclear waste facility, but local authorities are pressuring residents to stop. Online discussion of the issue has been heavily censored, and a man has been charged with “disrupting social order” for allegedly spreading a rumor that workers were planning a strike. According to images of a document tweeted by @beidaijin, the city’s port is also forcing all employees to sign an agreement to “three do nots and two leads.” They must pledge not to “believe rumors,” “spread rumors,” or “participate” in “illegal assemblies”; and are suggested to “take the lead” in both signing the agreement and carrying out its stipulations.

Lianyungang Harbor Holding Group, Ltd.

Urgent Notice on “Three Do Nots and Two Leads” Agreement for Port Workers and Staff

To All Work Units, Departments, Shareholders, and Member Enterprises: According to the demands of the spirit of the municipal assembly and the holding group’s Party committee, all workers and staff must carry out the “three do nots and two leads” agreement (attached). All work units and departments are kindly asked to make the agreement in accordance with the principles below:

The person responsible in each work unit (general manager, Party committee secretary), in keeping with the “Table of Lianyungang Harbor Holding Co. Leadership and Team Member Stability Maintenance Work Points of Contact and Division of Responsibilities,” is to make the agreement to the holding group leader in contact with their respective work unit; members of other teams are to make the agreement to the primary person responsible for their work unit. Section leaders are to make the agreement to the leadership in charge of each work unit; team leaders are to make the agreement to section leaders; and workers and staff are to make the agreement to team leaders. Each work unit is responsible for getting their external personnel to complete the agreement work (the agreement may be signed by text message, collectively, or other means).

The primary person responsible in every department of the organization is to make the agreement to the holding group’s leadership; departmental deputies are to make the agreement to the persons responsible in their department, and other organization personnel are to make the agreement to the leadership in charge of the department.

Every work unit and department, in accordance with the principles of one level carrying the other, is to ensure that food service workers sign the agreement. The holding group’s commission for discipline inspection will send an inspection team to check the status of every work unit in its fulfillment of the agreement.

Agreement

In the past few days, people have been assembling illegally because of the nuclear cycle project, seriously affecting social stability and the outside image [of Lianyungang]. For this reason, I promise:

I will not believe rumors. I will resolutely carry this out, and I will respect notices issued by the municipal government.

I will not spread rumors. I will not send any incorrect messages via text or WeChat, and I will not publish anything that goes against the requirements of the municipal government.

I will not participate. I will not become involved in any illegal assembly, demonstration, or similar activity. [Chinese]

@beidaijin has also shared screenshots from two WeChat conversations indicating that food service workers have indeed been asked to sign this agreement, as have staff at a local hospital:

]]>196007Minitrue: Delete Article on Nuclear Project Suspensionhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2016/08/minitrue-delete-article-lianyungang-nuclear-suspension/
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 05:21:01 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=195904The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source.

Do not republish the Sohu article “Cautiously Welcoming the Decision to Suspend the Lianyungang Nuclear Waste Project.” Please delete it wherever it has already been published. (August 11, 2016) [Chinese]

The Sohu article targeted by the directive described the suspension as the “correct response” to the protests, but argued that the authorities’ 13-character statement leaves too much uncertainty, and that a final decision should swiftly follow. The authorities’ lack of transparency, it suggested, was to blame for the growth of public opposition:

Within the space of a few days, the position of the Lianyungang government underwent an earth-shaking reversal entirely on account of the public’s great efforts. The people hated the reportedly multi-billion yuan nuclear project, and were unable to get a single piece of useful information about it. The project negotiations were a closed affair between the contractor and the government, and because the results were so sketchily publicized, the public were dissatisfied at being kept in the dark. [Chinese]

Ideally, it continued, the suspension would be followed by effective communication and equitable dialogue between the public and government, with the former playing a properly informed role in the final decision about the project site. Moreover, lessons should be learned to avoid the derailment of other nuclear projects around China.

No matter how large the nuclear cycle project’s halo, no matter how much the China National Nuclear Corporation values an order for a multi-billion yuan nuclear waste treatment facility, and no matter how eager the French party Areva is to cast off the pressure of its financial nightmares [background] with this Chinese project, now that the site suspension has been announced, it is to be hoped that this act is not a perfunctory tactic to manage public opinion pressure, but a starting point for open dialogue and consultation. Do not overestimate the strategic value of concealment, and do not underestimate the public’s resolve in opposing nuclear waste, which is far more dangerous than a paper factory’s waste water. [Chinese]

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.

The government of Lianyungang, a city near the coast of Jiangsu Province, announced the retreat in a terse message online. “The people’s government of Lianyungang has decided to suspend preliminary work for selecting a site for the nuclear cycle project,” it read, referring to a proposed plant for reprocessing used fuel from nuclear plants.

No reason was given, but it appeared clear enough. In recent days, residents have taken to the streets to oppose any decision to build the plant nearby. The main urban area of Lianyungang is just 20 miles southwest of a large and growing nuclear power plant on the coast, but the idea of a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility also being built in the area seemed to push public unease to a new height.

[…] “While the Chinese government does not hesitate to arrest the few political dissidents, it spends more time and energy to appease public demands,” Wenfang Tang, a professor of political science at the University of Iowa, who studies public opinion and politics in China, said in emailed comments.

“The high level of government sensitivity and responsiveness to public opinion further encourages political activism in Chinese society,” Professor Tang said. “The louder you are, the more quickly the government will respond.” [Source]

The government has spent heavily to build up its ability to produce fuel and process waste and the state-owned China National Nuclear Corp. has been seeking to build a nuclear fuel reprocessing center with French partner Areva starting in 2020. State media say a unit of CNNC and its French partner have looked at more than 10 potential locations for the reprocessing center and did preliminary research last year on Lianyungang.

[…] In 2013, similar plans to build a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in the southern city of Heshan, near Hong Kong, were scrapped following protests by residents over possible risks.

Chinese authorities also have scrapped or postponed other petrochemical and other industrial projects elsewhere following protests, but in some cases work goes ahead after tensions die down. [Source]

Residents used social media platforms to question the process but the comments were soon deleted by censors. “What if there is any radiation leakage? Why does the government want to make a decision on such a big issue on its own, a decision that will affect ­future generations?” they asked.

[…] The process has been shrouded in secrecy, with Lianyungang residents discovering that their city could be the site for the plant after the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence announced in a press ­release that a deputy head visited the city on July 26 and claimed “much progress has been made on site selection”.

[…] Xiamen University energy policy specialist Lin Boqiang said the plan was shelved as a result of a lack of transparency and communication by the government and state-owned nuclear companies. [Source]

Large environmental protests are growing in frequency in China, and the ones in Lianyungang—about 250 miles north of Shanghai—highlight anxieties over the country’s nuclear ambitions. Several residents said they are concerned in light of the 2011 Fukushima meltdown in Japan.

“I love this city and I don’t care how great the GDP is,” said one local resident who didn’t want to be named. “I just want a quiet and healthy neighborhood without risks.”

[…] Chinese cities have been the scene of a string of recent environmental demonstrations. The not-in-my-backyard movements have put local leaders on the defensive as they seek both economic development and social calm.

Nuclear is an increasingly important part of China’s energy mix, and industry experts say many more reactors will be needed if the country is to wean itself off coal, a major source of air pollution and carbon emissions. There are 20 reactors under construction in China, far more than in any other nation, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. [Source]

“You see, yesterday [Sunday] many innocent people were dragged, badly beaten, and taken away,” a man who had joined the demonstration on Sunday night told Sixth Tone without giving his name.

Videos that were widely circulated on social media showed SWAT police chasing after citizens and violently beat them as they were lying on the ground. Eyewitnesses confirmed the brutal beatings. Sixth Tone could not independently verify footage showing a policeman put a handgun to a protester’s head. “It was such chaos. It’s not possible to tell who attacked first. These SWAT units, to be frank, don’t have good manners,” the man, who works as a taekwondo teacher, said.

[…] A student surnamed Zhang said that the large crowd on Sunday included people who brought knives, got into fights, and threw water bottles and eggs, and that video footage of the violent clashes was authentic. “There were videos of the same thing, taken from different angles. Some were taken by my friends. How could they be fake?” the 18-year-old said. [Source]

The government of Lianyungang, a city in Jiangsu Province, tried to calm residents on Sunday, a day after thousands of people defied police warnings and gathered near the city center, chanting slogans, according to Chinese news reports and photographs of the protests shared online.

They chanted “no nuclear fuel recycling project,” the state-run Global Times reported, citing footage from the scene. “It is unsafe to see another nuclear project coming and besieging us,” one resident told the paper.

Residents used WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging service, to share video footage showing downtown Lianyungang at night crowded with hundreds of people, many of them middle-aged, walking down a broad street in waves and chanting loudly, “Oppose nuclear waste, defend our home.”

The city government responded with the mix of reassurances and warnings that Chinese officials often use in the face of protests over pollution and environmental concerns. “Currently, the project is still at the stage of preliminary assessment and comparing potential sites, and nothing has been finally decided,” the city government said in a statement issued on Sunday. [Source]

“The government kept the project a secret. People only found out about it recently. That’s why most people are worried,” said Mr Sheng, a local resident who declined to give his full name. “Some speculate that the nuclear waste is from other countries and do not understand why the project should be built here instead of over there if it’s as safe and beneficial as they say.”

[…] “We already have a chemical industrial park in Lianyungang and the pollution problem is quite worrying. Nuclear waste is far worse than normal chemical pollution,” said Mr He, a local shop owner.[Source]

The rally over a used-nuclear-fuel processing and recycling plant underscored the tension ­between public concern over ­nuclear safety and the growing pressure on China to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.

[…] China’s ambition to develop nuclear power was briefly hampered in 2011, after Beijing suspended approval for new nuclear power stations and started to conduct nationwide safety checks of all projects in the wake of the ­disaster in Fukushima, Japan.

The moratorium was lifted last year when at least two nuclear power plants, including one in ­Lianyungang, were given the green light for construction.

The nation’s five-year plan covering 2016 to 2020 calls for a dramatic increase in non-fossil-fuel energy sources, with six to eight new nuclear plants to be built each year.

China has 35 nuclear reactors in operation and 20 under construction, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Six provinces – including Guangdong, Shandong , ­Fujian, Zhejiang and Gansu – the only inland province – are listed as candidates for the Sino-French project, according to China Business News. [Source]

There was a pressing need in China to train more nuclear engineers and other technicians as the nation spearheads efforts to build more reactors to meet its energy needs and greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.

The cover-up of a pump failure in March 2015 at the Yang­jiang nuclear power station in Guangdong province was only made public in May this year when the environment ministry announced that was holding four operators responsible. The team leader lost his senior operator’s licence and was moved to a less sensitive post, while the remaining three received warnings.

[…] Experts and industry insiders said a cover-up or a delay in reporting an incident should technically not happen because of strict safeguards and the fact that a pump failure could potentially lead to a shutdown of the power plant – making it more difficult to keep it at the dark.

But the shortage of nuclear professionals may push plant operators to cover up incidents because imposing disciplinary action on professionals would mean means there would be fewer workers to maintain operations.

“There is a shortage of skilled hands,” said a nuclear engineer with the China National Nuclear Corporation, a competitor of China General Nuclear in the domestic market. [Source]

A real estate industry source said Zhao also found ways to get around government regulations for apartment building construction projects. He exploited first-time home buyers who knew little about real estate-purchase contracts, the source said. And he registered companies in the British Virgin Islands with legal addresses in Hong Kong to act as “foreign partners” in his investments.

Another Zhao development scheme involved changing a building’s size after finding buyers and signing purchase contracts. In Tianjin, for example, what was supposed to be a 47-story building turned out to be 52-story project. Buyers were not pleased.

Li Ming, who owns an apartment at Tianjin’s Chengji, said buyers were told that the complex would be altogether 291,434 square meters. But when completed, it was 340,462 square meters. Li said he and other homeowners complained to city officials without results.

A source close to Zhao said the developer’s companies often managed to increase profits by adding floors or expanding floor space beyond what was originally planned. In another trick that benefited the developer, home ownership documents were altered to understate floor space. [Source]

Leavenworth follows up on the Caixin investigation by interviewing residents of Zhao’s buildings and the lawyer who defended them. Residents who raised safety and fraud issues about his developments suffered harassment, threats, and, for one, a year’s detention. Leavenworth writes that Zhao’s case shows the weaknesses in Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption crackdown, as some corruption is allowed to flourish unchecked if the perpetrators are not targeted by Xi. He interviews Hu Chunyu, a lawyer hired to defend residents suing Zhao’s development company, who was beaten and offered bribes to drop the case:

“As soon as they learned they could not buy me, they turned to violent tactics,” he said. These included threats, vandalism and a pair of thugs who, according to Hu, kicked and beat him outside his office in early 2014. To protect his family, Hu moved out of their apartment and stayed in different hotels for several nights.

[…] The lawyer said the intimidation tactics continued on and off for months until July 2014, when authorities detained Zhao as part of a broad anti-graft investigation. Three months later, state media reported that the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection had detained Zhao’s father, Zhao Shaolin, for “serious violations of law and regulations.” In December, similar charges were leveled against Wang Min, a former Jinan party chief accused of taking massive bribes from a developer named “Zhao.”

Altogether, according to Caixin, five other public officials associated with Zhao Jin have been detained in Tianjin, Nanjing and Jinan.

[…] Yet the nightmare is far from over for many of those who say they were conned by Zhao. As their buildings deteriorate, some property owners say their life savings are at risk, and they have no one to hold accountable. [Source]

Chinese authorities on Tuesday said an August explosion at a factory that supplied auto parts for General Motors Co. and other car makers killed at least 146 people, nearly double the initial death toll.

The Chinese government also said late Tuesday that it would prosecute three senior executives of Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Production Co., the company that owned the factory in the eastern industrial city of Kunshan where the explosion occurred, as well as 15 Kunshan government officials. The statement added that Guan Aiguo, the city’s top Communist party leader, and Lu Jun, the mayor of Kunshan, were ousted from their jobs over the matter.

[…] The company was known for high levels of dust, according to its workers. “It was like a sauna room, and dust everywhere from the ground to the air. Nobody told us how to deal with the hazards of dust,” Li Xiang, 24 years old, told The Wall Street Journal in August. He was a polishing worker at Zhongrong in 2013. [Source]

They worked under cover of night in early June, dumping truckloads of dirt on the new highway and planting fast-growing soybean seeds in the thin soil. Then they erected a sign alerting passersby to the freshly sown crop. This wasn’t some ecological initiative like urban roof gardens or solar street lamps; it was an attempt literally to cover up a sprawling highway construction project. Officials in Sihong, a county of about one million people in China’s wealthy, coastal Jiangsu province, had built the network of blacktop without a needed green light from provincial land management authorities. (China has strict quotas on how much arable land can be converted for construction projects due to concerns about food security and grain self-sufficiency.) Over the last week, their bumbling efforts to cover their tracks, with a field of beans, have made them the laughing-stock of Chinese state media and the country’s Internet.

[…] But as the story percolated, many realized that Sihong was not only the birthplace of the amusing bean fiasco, but also the hometown of a group of seven petitioners who on the morning of July 16 had gathered outside the offices of the China Youth Daily, a state-run paper, in Beijing and swallowed pesticide. The mass suicide attempt was intended as a protest against land seizures by officials back home. The group had tried bringing their grievances to government officers earlier, but to no avail. Here was a story smack at the intersection of awful and the absurd. [Source]

]]>175769Twelve Petitioners Attempt Suicide in Beijinghttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/07/twelve-petitioners-attempt-suicide-beijing/
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 18:39:28 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=175202The Telegraph’s Tom Phillips reports on two separate incidents in which a total of 12 petitioners attempted suicide in Beijing. On Wednesday morning, seven people from Jiangsu lay on the ground outside the offices of the China Youth Daily newspaper after drinking pesticide, surrounded by documents related to the forced demolitions of their homes in Jiangsu:

Qin Zeying, the wife of one of the group, 58-year-old Cai Fuxi, said she had not been aware of her husband’s plans but hinted that she supported them.

“We had no other option but to resort to this to make ourselves heard. We have lost our house. We have lost everything,” she told The Telegraph. “We’ve been driven to homelessness. We’ve been driven into a corner – the government gave us no way out.”

Ms Qin said her husband, who she believes is now “out of danger”, had dedicated his life to obtaining compensation after the family home was demolished.

He had previously travelled to Nanjing, the provincial capital, to protest, she said. There, he was detained and thrown into an illegal “black jail” where, for three days, he had “no food, no sleep and not even a drop of water to drink”. “All my husband wants is to get an answer,” she added. [Source]

Wang Hai and Jiang Yanjun, petitioners from Sihong who did not participate in the suicide, told the Global Times that the petitioners gave their materials to a male reporter from the China Youth Daily in May in front of the newspaper’s building in Beijing.

“The story was never printed. Some petitioners were imprisoned after they came back from Beijing. Many felt that they were fooled,” Wang said.

The China Youth Daily could not be reached to confirm the information and the reporter’s work phone number provided by the petitioners was later found to be invalid. [Source]

On Friday, Tianjin municipality relaxed the one-child policy, the country’s fourth city to do so, following east China’s Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Anhui provinces.

“Provincial-level governments in Beijing, Guangxi, Hubei and Jiangsu have announced their intentions to relax the policy in March. Others, including Hunan, Qinghai and Shanghai, promised changes in the first half of the year,” official news agency Xinhua reported.

The changed policy has been more than welcomed with many urban couples, according to state media, who are ready to opt for a second child.

In a survey released by the China Population Welfare Foundation, 71.4 percent of people with a monthly income of more than 20,000 Yuan (around Rs. 2 lakh) would like a second child. [Source]

Rosa Xia, a 39-year-old mother in Shanghai, is allowed to have a second child. She doesn’t think she can afford it.

She reckons a fifth of the 6,000 yuan ($989) a month she earns as a Shanghai nanny goes to her 12-year-old daughter Amy: saxophone and ballet lessons, on top of food and school. Then there’s saving for her only offspring’s college education.

[…] Doting parents like Xia help explain why China’s move to ease family-planning rules is unlikely to reverse falling birth rates that have saddled the country with a shrinking labor pool and aging population.

The brass-clad statue, which shimmers golden in the sunlight and switches into a garish light show at night, was built by the city of Yangzhong, in Jiangsu Province in eastern China, to lure visitors to a monthlong gardening expo that opened in September. The “puffer fish tower” has an elevator to take visitors up the equivalent of 15 stories into the sculpture’s belly to view the lush scenery near the Yangtze River.

But news reports and pictures online of the creature, floating on scaffolding with its mouth agape and eyes glowing green, have prompted many Chinese citizens to wonder: Why devote 70 million renminbi, about $11.4 million, of government money for a giant metal fish, especially when the party leader, Xi Jinping, has demanded an end to frivolous spending on officials’ vanity projects? [Source]

Ma told the Beijing News that the wedding was hosted by both families, and that he “couldn’t stop” the bride’s family from splurging on the venue as well as a troupe of performers that included two celebrities famous for their own lavish wedding.

A branch of the ruling Communist Party’s anti-graft watchdog fired Ma for waste and discipline violations, adding that while it had not found any abuse of public funds, it was investigating, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

[…] “I’m a village official, I know all about the party’s rules and what you should not do, but the bride’s family insisted and I couldn’t stop them,” he told Xinhua. [Source]

]]>163958Escaped Roaches Stir Officials in Jiangsuhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/08/escaped-roaches-stir-officials-jiangsu/
Tue, 27 Aug 2013 02:32:47 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=162111At least one million cockroaches escaped a farm in Jiangsu province earlier this month after someone destroyed the greenhouse where the owner was breeding them for use in traditional medicine, according to local media. From AFP:

The cockroaches fled the facility in Dafeng, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, for surrounding cornfields earlier this month after an “unknown perpetrator” destroyed the plastic greenhouse where they were raised, the Modern Express newspaper said.

Disease control authorities have sent five investigators to the area to come up with a plan to stamp out the insects.

Farm owner Wang Pengsheng invested more than 100,000 yuan ($16,000) in 102 kilograms of Periplaneta americana eggs after spending six months developing a business plan, the report Friday said. [Source]

The state-run Global Times reported that locals officials in Dafeng eased the concerns of residents that the cockroaches would damage their crops or spread disease.

]]>162111Party Progeny Rise to Top in Local Governmenthttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/05/party-progeny-rise-to-top-in-local-government/
Wed, 22 May 2013 20:58:07 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=156520Yuan Huizhong. (Weibo)
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online.
State Internet Information]]>

Yuan Huizhong. (Weibo)

The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online.

State Internet Information Office: Immediately delete contents which calls into question the appointment of the children of cadres to positions in local government, members of the so-called “governing second generation,” “governing third generation,” “red second generation, etc. (including news, blogs, forum posts, images, and video). Report on the progress of your work. (May 14, 2013)

The keywords “governing second generation” (官二代), “governing third generation” (官三代), and “red second generation” (红二代) are all searchable on Weibo.

CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

Grand Canal barges have no fancy names, no mermaids planted on the bow, no corny sayings painted on the stern. Instead they have letters and numbers stamped on the side, like the brand on a cow. Such an unsentimental attitude might suggest unimportance, but barges plying the Grand Canal have knit China together for 14 centuries, carrying grain, soldiers, and ideas between the economic heartland in the south and the political capitals in the north.

[…]Canal people, known as chuanmin, re-create village life on their $100,000 barges. Like farmers at harvest time, the small crews—generally just one family—start at dawn and go till evening, when they tie up their boats next to each other. Old Zhu’s wife, Huang Xiling, now posted at the stern, had given birth to the family’s two sons on earlier barges. She cooked, cleaned, and made the boat’s little cabin a retreat from the water, wind, and sun. “The men say these boats are just a tool for making money, but our lives are spent on them,” she said. “You have so many memories.”

[…]Chuanmin rarely indulge themselves. They live by the hard-nosed calculations that determine whether a family gets rich or is ruined. This was driven home to me at the end of our first day. I was chatting with Zheng Chengfang, who came from the same village as Old Zhu. Our boats were tied up together, and I’d hopped over to visit with him. Wasn’t it a wonderful sight, I said to Zheng as we surveyed Old Zhu’s boat, freshly painted and gleaming in the sunset?

“No, no, no, you don’t understand us,” he blurted out. “It’s not a question of good. We chuanmin need the boats, or we can’t survive.”

Chinese archaeologists said that a tomb unearthed in east Jiangsu Province might be the final resting place of an emperor known for his tyrannous reign about 1,500 years ago.

The 20-square-meter tomb in Yangzhou City might belong to Yang Guang, or Emperor Yang of Sui, the second and last monarch of the short-lived Sui Dynasty (581-618), according to the city’s cultural heritage bureau.

[…]A notorious tyrant in China’s history, Yang Guang made millions of workers build palaces and luxury leisure boats. His legacy includes the Grand Canal, which was later increased to connect Beijing and Hangzhou in the world’s longest artificial waterway.

The emperor was killed during a mutiny in 618 AD, which marked the end of the Sui Dynasty and may explain the relatively small scale of the extravagant emperor’s tomb, researchers said.

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/04/the-grand-canal-chinas-ancient-lifeline/feed/1154756Is the Most Famous Peasant a Dictator?http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/is-the-most-famous-peasant-a-dictator/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/is-the-most-famous-peasant-a-dictator/#commentsWed, 20 Mar 2013 06:04:30 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=153262Wu Renbao, the Party chief of Huaxi Village, died of lung cancer on Monday, stirring up a debate over his dictatorial policies that created one of China’s leading rural economies. From Amy Li at South China Morning Post:

When China adopted capitalism in the 1980s, Wu, then a local party secretary, promptly switched the village economy from agriculture to manufacturing and trade. It subsequently developed into one of China’s most successful economies.

[…] Unlike villagers elsewhere in China, Huaxi’s more than 2,000 residents were shareholders in a public company – Jiangsu Huaxi Group Corporation. They earned handsome dividends and shared the wealth with Wu’s family, who ran the business and managed village affairs.

[…] But unlike shareholders in other corporations, villagers lose their shares and benefits if they leave Huaxi. This was condemned as “unfair”.

Wu’s son and successor, Wu Xieen, is the now village party secretary and chief executive of the Jiangsu Huaxi Group Corporation. Wu’s sons control 90 per cent of Huaxi’s wealth, while his family members occupy most of key positions in the village government, said media reports.

In their fulsome praise of Wu Renbao today, China’s newspapers all mention that he made the cover of Time magazine in 2005. So I went looking through all the covers of Time magazine in 2005 and came up empty-handed. It was then, however, that I discovered that the newspaperNew News (新消息报) from Qinghai province had kindly printed the said Wu Renbao Timecover, inadvertently revealing that it and all the other Chinese newspapers had been embarrassingly duped by a blatantly fake Timecover. It boggles the mind how this newspaper didn’t notice its terrible mistake, with the fake cover being such a nut job of nonsensical grammar. The fake Wu Renbao cover, it emerged, was in fact ripped off of thisTime cover from January 2006. This fakery has already been reported on Weibo today (e.g. here or here), and elsewhere on the Chinese Internet.

Yet before we completely dismiss New News as a sorry excuse for a newspaper, it would probably be remiss not to mention that this snafu (as with everything else related to Chinese news reporting) was likely first propagated by Xinhua itself. Looking back at the paper trail of news reports yesterday, it does appear as ifXinhua was first with publishing a story of the news of Wu’s death and the claim that he appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 2005 in a report published at around 20:30 last night. As mentioned above, Xinhua had already reported the false assertion on its Weibo account just after six last evening.

Inexorably in China, all news leads back to Xinhua, and then all the rest follow.

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/is-the-most-famous-peasant-a-dictator/feed/2153262Guangdong Economy Still On Top, For Nowhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/01/guangdong-economy-still-on-top-for-now/
Wed, 30 Jan 2013 02:21:49 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=150726Senior Guangdong officials are feeling the heat, according to Li Jing at The South China Morning Post, as they fear the province may lose its spot as China’s top economic powerhouse:

In a panel discussion on Friday afternoon, Hu told the provincial legislative congress that the gross domestic product of Jiangsu province was catching up quickly with Guangdong, according to a China News Service report.

Hu said that whichever province earned the No1 ranking for GDP growth would attract even more investment.

The comment came in stark contrast to Hu’s predecessor, Wang Yang, who told local officials a year ago to focus more on industrial upgrades and social reform, while keeping a cool head about GDP.

Echoing Hu’s remarks, the director of Guangdong’s statistics bureau, Xing Xiaowei warned that Jiangsu, whose GDP expanded by 10.1 per cent in 2012, would overtake Guangdong in 2015 “if we do not accelerate our pace”, the Guangdong party mouthpiece, Nanfang Daily, reported on Saturday.